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During the most intense parts of the COVID-19 lockdown, many of us were forced to exercise at home.

The hard lockdown may be over, but that doesn’t mean we are all waking up diligently at sparrow’s fart to throw ourselves around in front of strangers at the gym.

While it might not be ideal to listen to your upstairs neighbours heave themselves around while you work, home workouts haven’t been that bad for those among us adverse to early mornings, or loathers of the gym more generally.

However, it turns out there are quite a few possible mistakes to be made while working out at home, according to professional personal trainers who spoke with VICE.

Many of these mistakes have to do with limiting gains, wasting energy, or causing soreness and even injury.

Luckily, with every mistake comes a way to improve, and the personal trainers have provided some fair points to consider if you want to take your home workout to the next level.

Equipment dos and don’ts

Getting hench might seem tricky when you don’t have 10 [kilograms] of metal to lug about. But that doesn’t mean you have to immediately equip your whole room out like your own personal gym (unless you have the space and funds, in which case – sure, go for it).

Really, though, all you may need is your own body weight and some resistance bands to get your muscles going.

That’s because “strength training is basically resistance training”, says Lillie Bleasdale, personal trainer and head coach at PASSA:

In other words, while people might rely on using machines and weights at the gym, just using your bodyweight in different ways (pull-ups, press-ups, squats etc) can be pretty effective. You might not start seriously packing a mass – because that does take heavy weights – but you’re going to get stronger, which can only be good.

There’s also something called “time under tension” which is basically holding the squat or press-up position for a few more seconds each time.

High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) dos and don’ts

It feels like doing HIIT for 15 mins a day, every day, will make us come out looking absolutely marbled.

It feels good, it makes us sweat, it improves oxygen consumption, and increases metabolism. Plus, it is really rather convenient.

But it is not always what it is made out to be:

“People do something like HIIT every day, because it feels so good. It’s very addictive,” says personal trainer Meera Kumar.

“However, it also puts a lot of stress on your body and it’ll increase your levels of cortisol. You have to remember that exercising is a stressor, so you have to honour that recovery process.”

So it is recommended to do only a couple of HIIT sessions a week, balanced out with other activities.

The same old dos and don’ts

Doing the same workout every day, or every time you train, will not do you any favours:

“You won’t gain strength, you won’t gain speed, or whatever your goals are, because you’re just doing the same thing over and over again,” says Devinder Bains, a personal trainer and health coach. “Your muscles adapt to the exercises that you’re doing very easily.”

Just like life, your routine has to get continuously more challenging for you to progress and repetition is the biggest hindrance to that.

Not moving enough generally dos and don’ts

Humans are not meant to be nearly as sedentary as we are now.

We sit, we stand, we lie down, come work or play, but that is not how we reach ideal fitness levels.

At home we’re often guilty of moving from bed to burpee in an instant, which isn’t ideal for the body.

…“Humans are meant to move periodically, not just once in the day,” Kumar points out. This doesn’t mean you should be non-stop working out, but it can help to incorporate a nice walk or some yoga into the mix.

“It helps with recovery,” Bains adds. “It’s called non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT).”

The pros recommend adding as much walking, stair-taking, or stretching and yoga in between your workouts as possible.

Technique and form dos and don’ts

Many good trainers out there would prefer you “lifted lighter and focussed on getting form correct”.

That’s because you might be targeting unintended muscle groups, or wasting energy if your form is not correct.

It is recommended to watch a video of yourself working out so that you can catch all your form mistakes.

Particularly, if your knee is wobbling or something is not quite in-line or tilted over to one side more than the other, then that is a sign you need to be working on those areas more.

There you go, now you know.

Go forth and be better.

[source:vice]